But honestly, how do you talk to those people? They're so caught up in their us-versus-them mentality and think they have the monopoly on truth, that I don't see any way of convincing them that they're not only making a potentially fatal mistake but are a danger to those around them.
I’m immunosuppressed so even though I’ve had 6 vaccines now, I still might not have built up enough antibodies to help me survive covid if I catch it. I don’t really go anywhere and wear a mask when I do so I’m as safe as I can be… Except I need a carer to help me out for about 8 hours a week and an unbelievable amount of self employed carers aren’t vaccinated. These are people who work with the elderly and vulnerable and they refuse to get vaccinated. It’s absolutely mind boggling to me.
I've heard this is a problem among nurses. Having just enough knowledge to be able to think you know what you're doing is dangerous. I suppose that's also a reason education shouldn't stop at the bare minimum to perform your work tasks. (obviously not all nurses, but statistically much more so than doctors)
I know several nurses who think they know more than doctors.
They all are wrong on stuff that's so easily verifiable that I can't believe these were in charge of whole nurse areas in important hospitals.
Knowing all this sucks.
It's so much worse than just the nurses. I work alongside a host of different first responder groups, and the vast majority of them are unvaxed conspiracy nuts. Many of these people are dear to me, and I can't tell you just how crushed I was to see these otherwise normally intelligent people I care about just.. lose their damn minds over covid. I think it permanently broke something in me to be surrounded by them and watch them spiral down that rabbit hole. The one I'm around the most is convinced the flu vaccine from just before covid hit turned her injection site magnetic. She actually had me take a magnet and hold it to the spot and when the magnet did not stick to her arm, just kept saying I wasn't getting the right spot. Didn't matter where I put it. Didn't stick, but it was because I was doing something wrong. Not because it's fucking ludicrous to claim a shot magnetizes you.
I am so goddamn bitter now.
Dunning-Kruger effect. Just enough knowledge to think they know everything and not enough to recognise they barely scratched the surface.
I know a girl that is one of those exact idiots. Bitch had the gall to complain that she got laid off during the covid crisis because she refused to be vaccinated as a caretaker and took it as undeniable truth that covid was a lie. If they truly needed so many hands, why would they fire her was her point...
Sadly, her toxic circle of friends supported her outrage and she still feels like she did nothing wrong.
I just don't bother TBH. Same with all these alt-right type people who keep trying to start pointless arguments online, I just ignore them. You can't combat nonsense with facts, they're not going to learn anything or change their views, I'm certainly not going to come around to whatever they're peddling, all they want to do is get their little dopamine hit by blasting bullshit at me until I give up because they think that's what winning is. It's a waste of time and energy as far as I'm concerned.
There are times when it’s useful to engage these people, though never for the purpose of convincing them. Sometimes, there’s an opportunity to provide a counterpoint for anyone who hasn’t yet been sucked into crazy-town, to help keep them away from that path.
I like to put it that “science education isn’t a cure, it’s a vaccine”; you can’t realistically change the mind of someone (especially of a stranger) who’s already bought in to a mindset like this; but in some cases, you can help prevent it from spreading.
That said, if you’re not particularly good at e.g. public speaking, or science outreach, or whatever, you can end up playing into a troll’s hands (assuming you’re interacting with an intentional troll and not just a deluded person). So it can be tricky, and personally I’m not very good at it.
While I mostly agree on the topic of fascists, with anti-vaxers just ignoring them basically means leaving them to die and potentially take a bunch of people with them, which seems rather cruel.
Even with fascists it boils down to hoping that whoever else they encounter is sufficiently immunised to not fall for their bullshit. Also less than ideal.
what's the alternative? if somebody can't be reasoned with should we just force-vaccinate them? then you're just providing them with much needed conspiracy confirmation from their perspective. if they're so far down the antivaccine rabbit hole, best thing to do is distance yourself (physically, too) and let nature play out. no sense trying to save them who don't want to be saved.
propaganda (where I am including fascists now) is also tricky due to the built in failsafe that 'if they disagree with us, we are right, there's the proof'. how do you even combat that? with vaccines, fence-sitters might be swayed by the potential risk to health if they don't take it and some survival instinct may kick in, but propaganda is free to take up with almost no risk to immediate survival.
We may not be allowed to forcibly vaccinate people, but I'd argue we could quarantine them. If someone has a history of attacking people we lock them away to protect the majority.
If someone refuses to get vaccinated without compelling medical reason, thus deliberately increasing their risk of an infection, and don't wear PPE, thus deliberately increasing the risk they pose to those around them, that is a very similar situation, albeit with less violence.
The failsafe in fascist reasoning only works if you have no understanding of logic, which obviously they don't. But yeah, it's like playing chess with a pigeon.
In my experience, telling them I got an organ transplant and got every vaccination available just makes them do the "well I'm just not sure about it is all" like they dont want to commit to it to my face.
Yes i have become a virus, destroyer of cells
You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy the virus, not join them!
OMNOMNOM CELL MEAT
Not the Younglings!
You no longer have DNA
Bitch, it's a vaccine, not a lethal dose of radiation
People like this can't be talked with, since they missed their lessons about what DNA even is.
Yeah this is a hard thing to broach on people because the whole DNA, how it is transcribed into mRNA, how that's dealt with inside the ribosomes with tRNA, and so forth. That's a good month worth of ninth grade science. That's a month's worth of Monday through Friday, one hour each day, for one month.
And even then, there's a bit of background that works into all of that. Like the various organelles and what their purpose is inside the cells. The various parts of the human immune system and how they work together to fight infections. So there's a lot of people who have a very flawed understanding of ninth grade science and you cannot just simply overcome that lack of knowledge in a single conversation. It's not a single conversation kind of knowledge, it's something that a good part of one's secondary education is devoted to and if you missed it then, it's really hard to go back and regain it.
The wild ramblings that sprung from this pandemic really shows that the education system has failed a lot of people. The why it has failed so spectacularly is a much, much bigger conversation. But all of this craziness that has been created in the wake of the pandemic is a complete failure of very basic science. And I think it's a sobering moment for all of us to soak in.
If you could trust they took you at your word you could give a decent explanation of RNA transcription in a few minutes with something like:
"DNA has two copies of all the instructions for making the proteins a cell needs, but it's locked inside the nucleus at the center. Thankfully there's something that makes a new copy, which is sent out of the nucleus to tell other parts what to do. It's like making a copy of a recipe in a cookbook and mailing it to someone so they know how to make it."
You don't need a month of ninth grade science to grok that, you just need to be open to learning new information.
For the OOP, all they need to know to avoid the thought presented is two things: 1) you need to make proteins continually and 2) DNA serves as a template for making proteins. That's all they literally need to know to realize being without DNA is deadly.
Randal Munroe: "Losing your DNA would most likely result in abdominal pain, dizziness, rapid immune system collapse, and death within days or hours from either rapid systemic infection or systemwide organ failure"
Thanks for posting the reference, I had it in mind but didn't act
It's a good month of science teaching for ninth graders to get it, for these people it's probably far longer
I'm pretty sure this is the plot of GATTACA 2.
Huh, TIL that there actually was a sequel (of sorts) in the works, albeit it’s been mothballed now. The original film was so fantastic… reading about the sequel I’m not sure how I feel about the idea. It does (or did) at least have some of the original team involved.
I can live without a sequel. The film stands fine on its own. We don't have to find out what happens if he makes it back from space.
GATTACA 2: Borrowed Ladder Boogaloo
Upon discovering the charred bone remains (cremation seldom actually burns everything, they grind up the ‘cremains’ so it’ll be a nice powder for the urn) in the apartment incinerator due to the smell of burning flesh authorizing a warrant, they find that Jerome, who is on the space ship, is actually dead on earth.
Vincent is played by Rob Schneider, so hijinks ensue, until they find out there really IS an imposter on the ship.
After credits has a teaser trailer for the Among Us movie, turns out these first two were just context prequels.
conspiracy theories are consistently just objectively cooler and more awesome than reality, like when conservatives start shouting about luxury gay space communism as if that's supposed to be bad.
I wish i lived in the world where we could inject people with something that turns their DNA into RNA and somehow they continue living, that's rad as hell.
No way is “the moon landing was faked” cooler than the fact humans walked on the moon 1961. And there is absolutely nothing cool about flat earthers!
No way is “the moon landing was faked” cooler than the fact humans walked on the moon 1961.
Are you starting a new conspiracy theory?
the point is it makes feel the conspiracy theorists special, as in that they know something no one else does
like this yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44
We live in a boring dystopia
That's the thing that gets me about conspiracy theories, they're always way too interesting to be real. There are real conspiracies out there but they're almost always boring because the last thing they want is to draw attention.
It's always fun to compare left-wing conspiracy theories to right-wing ones, left-wing theories are just "rich people are psychopaths who exploit our labour and earth is going to be miserable in 50 years, i want to die"
MY DEOXY's HAVE BEEN OXYED!!!!
When people are way too smug about their wrong answer.
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